The gifted young Polish pianist Rafal Blechacz . . . demonstrates the range of his powers here . . . He's virtuosic on Debussy's "Pour le Piano", whisking us up and down the keyboard . . . his "Pagodes" is weightlessly evocative. There's an almost existential yearning about Szymanowski's "Prelude & Fugue in C sharp minor", while "Sonata in C minor" is complex and involving.

Record Review /
Andy Gill,
Independent (London) / 17. February 2012

. . . [a] magnificent new CD. . . [Szymanowski: Sonata]: it is a hugely confident work, interpreted by Blechacz in a way that brings out its ripe personal voice and responds to its dramatic breadth of architecture as well as to the powerful momentum of the fugal finale and to the poignant delicacy of the slow movement. The disc is worth having for the Szymanowski alone, but Blechacz's Debussy is also a joy of limpid colour and immaculately weighed articulation, encapsulating the character and imagery of the music with a masterly and imaginative touch.

. . . this pairing of Debussy and Szymanowski confirms Blechacz is much more than a one-trick pianist; he's an artist of imagination and perception, with a fabulous range of keyboard touch and colour . . . His performances of "Pour le Piano" and "Estampes" are brilliantly characterised, with wit and a clarity of articulation . . . The Syzmanowski works are equally revelatory . . . Blechacz manages to channel its great extremes of dynamic and texture into a single entity . . . again the clarity of the playing is exceptional, but so, too, is the intelligence shaping it. It's a remarkable disc.

. . . he reveals himself as a patrician Debussian in the tradition of Cortot, Gieseking and Michelangeli, and an impassioned advocate for the music of . . . Karol Szymanowski. The programme is as expertly planned as it is fabulously played, juxtaposing the French composer's "Pour le piano suite", and its Bachian-titled pieces, Prélude, Sarabande, Toccata, with the Pole's Bach-inspired Prelude and Fugue in C sharp minor. The climatic work is Szymanowski's youthful, ambitious C minor Sonata . . . and it would be hard to imagine a more persuasive or brilliantly played performance. Blechacz's Debussy is little short of miraculous, revelling in the luminous textures and tintinnabulating chinoiserie of "Pagodes" from Estampes, the Lisztian flourishes of "Jardins sous la pluie" and the Gallic sensuality of "La Soirée dans Grenade" and "L'Isle joyeuse". This is an unforgettable disc from one of the pianistic giants of our time.

Record Review /
Hugh Canning,
The Times (London) / 11. March 2012

This is breathtaking . . . There is never any doubt that there is a personality shaping the music . . . [Debussy: Pour le piano]: Blechacz is firmly in control throughout this dazzling and absorbing pianistic discourse. "Pagodes", the opening piece of "Estampes", has atmospherically veiled colours, while Blechacz has no difficulty controlling the weather in an exhilarating "Jardins sous la pluie". All this is captured in sound that is excellent for CD . . . [Szymanowski]: Blechacz is a compelling advocate, by turns introverted an impassioned, building the unresolved climaxes to searing effect. This is exceptional playing. Blechacz paints with the keyboard without sacrificing any clarity.

. . . this finely characterised recital will surely place him centre stage once more. His Debussy is transparent, pure, yet not lacking in depth, driven with impetus and excitement . . . The real finds here [are the two early works by Karol Szymanowski] . . .

. . . a most rewarding, artfully conceived [disc] . . . I love Blechacz's crisp articulation and lightly pedaled bustle in the outer movements of "Pour le piano" (an arresting, impetuous opening to the "Prélude" and wonderful "jeu perlé" in its final page) . . . [Szymanowski: Prelude and Fugue in C sharp minor]: it is an attractive short work and beautifully played . . . fierce emotional engagement with the music . . . superior sound quality . . . [The Szymanowski Sonata] needs a pianist of Blechacz's high profile and stylistic authority to bring it to the forefront . . . full marks to DG for backing its young star . . .

Record Review /
Jeremy Nicholas,
Gramophone (London) / 01. May 2012

This 26-year-old pianist has a musical authority far beyond his years which emerges forcibly in his handling of three works by Debussy (including "L'Isle Joyeuse") and his fellow Pole Szymanowski. The latter's Sonata In C Minor is a remarkable display of shining harmony and modulation.

Record Review /
Paul Callan,
Scottish Sunday Express / 18. May 2012

. . . a compelling new album . . . [Blechacz] seems to be on track to become a genuinely memorable pianist . . . [Szymanowski]: The sonata, a terrific 25-minute piece, was an ear-opening discovery for me and should be better known . . . [Blechacz nails its flamboyant opening Allegro] with ecstatic precision . . . The following Adagio is beautifully quilted with restrained emotion, giving way to a stormy midsection. A light, classically-tinged Minuet proves a surprising buffer to the imposing final movement which, after a foreboding introduction, segues into a virtuosic triple fugue. Blechacz plays it all with an uncanny combination of confidence and abandon. As in his previous Chopin recordings, the music pours out naturally, with unmannered dexterity . . . With clean and fluid articulation, Blechacz doesn't overplay the whole-tone harmonies woven into the suite Pour le piano. Blechacz pounces on the Prelude with uncommon verve . . . Here's the exotic Debussy, flavoring his music with Indonesian gamelan in "Pagodes" and with hints of smoke and castanets in "La Soirée dans Grenade." Refreshingly, this isn't heavily pedaled, overly perfumed Debussy. It's unforced and evocative . . . With this smartly programmed, brilliantly played document of the piano at the opening of the 20th century, Blechacz once again proves he's a musician living up to that awards sweep in Warsaw.

Record Review /
Tom Huizenga,
NPR (Washington) / 26. September 2012

He fully conveys the deep Debussyan poetry of "Pour Le Piano", "Estampes", and "L'Isle Joyeuse" . . . This opens up new intellectual and poetic vistas for an enormously accomplished young pianist.

Record Review /
Jeff Simon,
Buffalo News / 21. October 2012

Rafal Blechacz continues to build his DGG legacy with this recital . . . a selection unusual and audacious at once . . . [Blechacz] reveals a sensitivity to the harmonic and coloristic dynamics in this often elusive composer [Debussy] . . .

. . . gripping accounts, each in its own fashion . . . [Debussy: "Pour le piano"]: Blechacz offers an impeccable rendition of the suite -- an improvisatory, unrestrained, and utterly finished flow in the "Prélude," beautifully voiced chords and gently engaging melodic lines in the "Sarabande," and clarity, flexibility, and propulsiveness in the "Toccata," all combined with superb tonal control . . . [Debussy: "Estampes"]: the first and last pieces sparkle with luminous effects and a wide range of tonal shadings . . . [Debussy: "L'Isle joyeuse"]: He presents an utterly compelling reading: splashy, colorful, and almost violent in its concentrated energy . . . [Szymanowski]: Blechacz steps up as a persuasive proponent. He makes the highly virtuosic and polyphonically complex works darkly passionate, brimming with biting harmonies and boiling intensity.

Rafał Blechacz Reveals Debussy’s and Szymanowski’s Musical Connection in this Album of Beauty

Rafał Blechacz is by talent, proclivity, and nationality the perfect choice to record works by his fellow Pole, Szymanowski

And therefore to record Debussy, too – whose presence in Szymanowski’s musical DNA looms large

Arguably the greatest Polish composer since Chopin, Szymanowski was also influenced by Ravel, Scriabin, and Strauss

For the first time on record Rafał Blechaczplays Szymanowski’s reverie-inducing music – a revelation to those unfamiliar with it

Debussy’s Impressionist soundscapes (also new to Rafał Blechacz’s discography) – including Pour le piano and Estampes – are a natural fit for a Chopin expert such as he

The bonus digital-track is Debussy’s nonpareil Clair de lune

Insights

The Triumph of Sensibility

Some of us can still recall a wet and windy autumn evening in Hamburg in 1984 when the world suddenly stood still – at least in the city’s Musikhalle, as it was called at that time. No one dared to breathe, so utterly remote from the world did we feel. Instead, the whole audience stared in astonishment at the performance onstage. For what we could hear was not just music, it was music by Debussy – Book Two of Les Préludes – and the man who was playing it was playing it so divinely that listeners inevitably felt they had been transported to the Arcadian Fields.

It was a miracle of a kind that rarely happens, and yet it was no miracle at all. For the pianist who held the world in the palm of his hand for this one brief moment in time was godlike in stature: Arturo Benedetti Michelangeli, a master magician. His appearances on the platform were always akin to an epiphany, especially when he was playing Chopin or Debussy. Then it was more than music. It was a spell cast over the listener’s soul.

It is entirely understandable, therefore, that Rafał Blechacz’s eyes light up when he speaks about this great artist, one of his favourite pianists, along with, among others, Alfred Cortot and Walter Gieseking. Michelangeli’s interpretations of Debussy offer the Polish artist an inspiration. This is clear not only from the translucent and almost transcendental way in which Blechacz interprets Estampes but also from the pianistic brilliance he brings to Pour le piano and from the iridescent colours of L’Isle joyeuse. Few pianists have ever been able to interpret Debussy’s musical language with such lucidity and at the same time in such virtuosic ways.

The young Polish pianist is not really interested in the ongoing musicological debate as to whether Debussy’s works are Impressionistic or not. For Rafał Blechacz, Debussy is unquestionably an Impressionist, but an Impressionist who has borrowed his structural virtues from Classicism and developed them a stage further. In short, Debussy was a composer who was fully aware of all that Mozart, Beethoven and Chopin had achieved but was able to translate all of this into the language of musical modernism. That is why Rafał Blechacz is able to describe Debussy as the king of colours.

If we stick to this image, it may not be presumptuous of us to describe Karol Szymanowski as the king of existential poetry. With the single exception of his compatriot Chopin, Szymanowski was unique in his ability to speak straight to the heart with his music. That was what he wanted. And there is no doubt that listeners are right to describe him as an Expressionist. Szymanowski’s musical language is filled with emotion, intuition and inspiration and with wit, voluptuousness and yearning. These were the qualities that struck Rafał Blechacz when, still little more than a child, he first heard Szymanowski’s music while at a recital by Jerzy Godziszewki, a teacher at the Bydgoszcz Academy where Blechacz was later to study. Godziszewski played several pieces by Szymanowski, among them Metopes and Masks, emotionally charged works full of sensual sonorities and remotely reminiscent of the mysticism of a composer like Scriabin but entirely distinctive in tone. The young Rafał Blechacz was fired up by a very real desire to enter this world, which he did by the circuitous route of the Variations op. 3.

Blechacz feels a tremendous affinity for Szymanowski, especially for a colossal work like the early C minor Sonata, which could be described as a continuation of Beethoven’s ideal of a free sonata form culminating in a fugue but using Expressionist means. The resultant work is a powerhouse of feelings not least because its monumental structure is combined with a range of sonorities extending from Classicism to Scriabin.

Rafał Blechacz performs this music with a nobility and authority that are almost disturbing when we recall how young he is. But at the same time the listener can sense the degree to which his extensive work on Bach and the Viennese Classical composers has influenced his sense of form and sonority. Apparently contradictory elements come together here: youthful impetuosity and the greatest poetical sensitivity. One might think there could be no greater contradiction, but this is only superficially the case, for, as physics teaches, opposites attract – especially when they are combined with such enormous reserves of energy.